Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday August 14, 2011 @06:44PM
from the thank-you-linus dept.

sfcrazy writes "Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux kernel 3.1 rc2. He said '300+ commits for -rc2 is good, but please make me even happier for -rc3 by ONLY sending me real fixes. Think of it as "fairly late in the -rc series," because I really want to compensate for the merge window being fairly chaotic.'"

What's with all the slashdot users recently, going fucking stupid about version numbering? Who cares what the versions are called: 3.10, 3.11.30 3.A03930. As long as the software works and the users (developers and end users alike) are able to interact with the software, what's the big issue?

What's with all the slashdot users recently, going fucking stupid about version numbering? Who cares what the versions are called: 3.10, 3.11.30 3.A03930. As long as the software works and the users (developers and end users alike) are able to interact with the software, what's the big issue?

Its evidence an underlying problem whereby projects are focusing their attention more on PR gimmicks and the 'gee-whiz' factor of version numbers than actually producing good software.

In the case of the Linux kernel I don't think that applies, after all the 2.6 kernel lasted many years and it is highly probable that 3.x will now do the same. With Firefox (and some others) however, the versioning itself is absurd and the new features being added in each version reflect the aforementioned attitude: "Hey lets

After a change, I'm either going to get a few "why don't we have the latest patches" or why did you install the latest major change without the proper approval. Teaching upper management is not easy and I've got a dozen reading summary reports daily and "know" what the monthly patch changes "look like"

I hate to break it to you, but there are many of us here who work professionally in the IT field. We don't have the luxury of being students such as yourself.

When you have to manage 80,000 or more desktops and servers, spread around the world, things like version numbers become very important. It's not so much the numbers themselves, but the expectations and facts that they should convey.

Responsibly using version numbers lets the software developers convey to us, the software administrators and users, important knowledge about the software they have created, and how it relates to earlier and future releases.

A major version number increase should signify massive changes. It should indicate to us that we should disregard any previous knowledge we have, and learn the software product from scratch. It indicates to us that we may need to provide extra assistance to the employees using the software we're tasked with administering. Do you get the idea? Are you beginning to follow what the real world is like? Yeah, it's not like what your computer science professors may have caused you to believe.

When projects start changing major version numbers without good reason, it makes us unsure about such projects. We lose the ability to predict how much of an impact upgrading will have, for instance. Worse, it gets executives asking questions. Even though Linux 3.0 is only slightly different from the last 2.6.39, the major version number jump makes some executives worry unnecessarily. They start to think that what's nothing more than a routine upgrade is more risky than it is.

I have colleagues in IT who have experienced similar problems with the recent Firefox debacle. They have to deal with users who don't want to upgrade from Firefox 4 to Firefox 5, thinking there will be major changes and adjustments, while there's almost no noticeable difference between the two "major" releases!

It hurts the adoption and acceptance of open source software when major projects start playing dumbass games like these with their version numbers. It does indeed create the so-called "FUD" for those who make decisions regarding the use of open source software.

When you do a company wide deployment you modify an existing distro. The one I used to maintain for AT&T Cable was based on RedHat but it was not redhat by the time we got done with it adding our special parts.

So yes, whoever is in charge of the In house Distro will care greatly about the kernel.

Or perhaps... just perhaps... the many of you that work professionally in the IT field got lazy. Really, really lazy. Rather than actually evaluating the merits of a new software release for yourselves (as one would expect an actual professional to do), you lazily shirked your responsibility and expected someone else to do your job for you. For software you very likely didn't pay for, because it was provided to you free of charge, with full source code, access to the entire history of the code reposito

You are so ignorant you must be another student. Not the grand parent but some of us *do* pay for open source software. Out side of academia most people don't have the liberty of seat of your pants forum and IRC support when shit goes seriously wrong. Got a linux kernel bug? Your Redhat support contract may (if its serious enough) get Alan Cox on the phone (did some years ago, I realize he has now left Redhat). Got a table that is being completely mis optimized? Your Maria contract will get you Monty. I could go on and on. Open source software isn't just about free software for kids who think patents are yucky and everything should be free, its about quality software through open community development. Version numbers matter, they matter to executives, they matter to ignorant users who fear upgrades. They matter to those who pay those support bills and vendor contracts that fund open source software development.

-- Don't have 80k Linux desktops, but I do have 35k and growing Linux servers

Right. And by having the source code, scripts written for hundreds of use cases magically check and correct themselves.

The parent *is* right. It helps if the version numbering consistently indicates whats going on. Being lazy and trying to rely on this has means not consuming too much hours for getting things done. And its sad. If i would know that upgrading a linux machine or connecting new versions to a environment is unpredictable in a way which makes me consume too-many extra hours for nothing (instead of using these to check when the real changes arrive), then i would have to recommend Windows or Solaris.

Look, the USERS will notice the version number bump and it will make them all puckery, so there is ample reason to be sane with version numbers. Who is more retarded, someone who bumps a version number to get attention like a whore, or someone who wants the version number to mean something? I submit that the answer is you.

That's not "shirking responsibility". That's due diligence. They're trying to judge the impact that upgrades will have, but doing a poor job using version numbers interferes with their evaluations.

I'd suggest that using version numbers for such a thing is an inherently poor way of doing it.
I can't believe that someone in 'enterprise' would upgrade to a new Linux kernel without appropriate testing and fallback positions even if that kernel update was a same-version distro update that only contained a few b

Obviously some are not as experienced as they pretend. Version numbering schemes vary wildly sometimes within the same product or project over time. If the above extremely condescending poster actually had the sort of experience they pretend they have they would know that versioning schemes vary very widely from place to place no matter what we would like to see as a standard.Nearly every time somebody brings up "the real world" it's a sign they live in a insultated bubble themselves. A cube in a city of

Consider some examples on say ten different products/projects from various sources and you will see exactly what I mean if you have somehow managed to forget in those thirty years. Version numbering is all over the place whether we like it or not and it depends on trends, whims and changes of management more than any sort of standard.As for "ad hominem", you are misusing it that term badly since it was instead a case of pointing out "a pot calling a kettle black". The GP post above was a pathetic attempt

Question:Why is it easier to manage them when theres an extra, superfluous, unchanging "6" in between the major and minor version numbers?

I mean, linux was at 2.6 for like 8 years. And the time difference between Linux 1.0.0 and 1.2.0 was a measly 1 year. Linus apparently concluded that hanging onto a number in the middle for several years makes no sense (which it doesnt), and that it makes even less sense to have the major version contain 2 numbers punctuated by a dot.

He has reverted to the exact same system that most other software has used for ages, MAJOR.minor. What is your beef?

Yeah the GP has a point when it comes to what Firefox has been doing but the new versioning for the Linux kernel isn't going down that route. As the parent said, it's just merging the first two numbers and there's no better time to do that then the next "major version" number switch (which would otherwise have been "2.8"). Even better in this case to start it at 3.0. So in reality this actually is a GOOD thing in terms of what the GP was posting about. It's a very clear line both in terms of when this c

It's hilarious how Slashdot likes to complain about Apple daring to charge for "minor" OS updates (it's only a point release!) but then gets all antsy over Linux moving to a standard major.minor scheme.

Even though Linux 3.0 is only slightly different from the last 2.6.39, the major version number jump makes some executives worry unnecessarily. They start to think that what's nothing more than a routine upgrade is more risky than it is.

This confuses me. Why would executives care about the Linux kernels version number?

Surely you are using Foobar Enterprise Linux 5.x and whatever kernel they are supporting as stable? And you and your executives only need to worry about big disruptive changes when you move to

THere was much, much bigger changes between Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 than just a UI bump, that was just the most visible. The Entire plugin structure has radically changed. I worked at a company that used literally hundreds of addins and macros (from tax calculating tools in excel, to enterprise email archiving tools in outlook). The sheer number of tools/scripts/apps that have had to be rewritten is about 10 times the cost of the actual licenses..

If you aren't going to have some consistency in terms of version numbering, why bother with point releases at all? If shit is just going to be a "whatever" situation, then why have a divided number? Just have a single number that gets incremented each time you release an update, for any reason. That'll work if you what to have an indicator of what is newer, but don't want to bother deciding what kind of release it is.

If you are going to do point releases, then make that shit mean something. Have some consis

I understand where you're coming from, but I think it's more applicable to commercial closed-source software which usually justifies a major version upgrade (for which you have to pay) with new and exciting (?) features. IOW, the new features are a hook to get you spend money again for software you've already paid for. The changes have to be drastic otherwise you wouldn't pay, would you?

But free software is different. The changes are more incremental. In a way, it's like evolution. You don't go from ape to

The flipside is true too though. The 2.6.x has been running so damned long and there can be massive changes between revision bumps. Your execs and admins might as easily be lulled into thinking there is no big deal between bumping between 2.6.39 and 2.6.40 when there could be substantial differences. And it extends to minor versions too. For example jumping from 2.4 to 2.6 doesn't sound like a big deal right?

Perhaps Linus is fed of listening this and has decided to change the versioning in a way more refl

Wow, "+5, insightful" for pretending IT professionals roll their own kernels or run the 'unstable' branch of $distro on 80,000 desktops or whatever. Slashdot truly has been taken over by gadget freaks and trolls.

I hate to nitpick, but I've yet to see anyone in IT actually upgrading a major version of the kernel. This is nearly unheard of except small, specialised Linux-shops. People tend to stick with whatever version came with their current version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or whatever their vendor is (I'm going to assume RHEL for the rest of this post with little or no loss of generality).

Red Hat may issue small kernel upgrades, but they don't even change the minor kernel version, just the patch level version t

When projects start changing major version numbers without good reason, it makes us unsure about such projects.

Only for as long as it takes you to get around to reading the changelist. For the amount you're harping on about being a professional, you would be reading the changelist regardless of the version number delta, right?

It hurts the adoption and acceptance of open source software when major projects start playing dumbass games like these with their version numbers. It does indeed create the so-called "FUD" for those who make decisions regarding the use of open source software.

Bah.

IT organizations who have the sophistication required to manage their own kernel versions and seriously think about tracking the Linux releases have the sophistication and focus to understand what's really in the releases, regardless of the version numbers. Everyone else just uses the kernel version provided by their distro of choice, so it's the distro version numbers they care about.

FFS this site is getting pathetic with the whining about version numbers. Does it really matter that damned much if it's 2.26.41, or 3.1? Does it make any difference if it's called Firefox 3.8 or 6.0? I tell you, I wish I could get back to a place in my life where my biggest issue was worrying about what the version number on open source projects was.

Yes, the version numbering matters. Because people with Cs in their titles make deployment decisions based on potentially false assumptions about the versioning. For example, there are going to be organizations stuck on firefox 4 for years because their CTO/CIO thinks that firefox 5 obviously represents a major upgrade and serious risk to their organization.

No. The reheater system uses the waste heat from the AC to reheat the air back to reasonable indoor temperatures. There is no extra energy needed for heating, in fact less energy will be consumed if the output temperature is higher: The AC condenser will get better cooling and the efficiency will increase.

FFS this site is getting pathetic with the whining about version numbers. Does it really matter that damned much if it's 2.26.41, or 3.1? Does it make any difference if it's called Firefox 3.8 or 6.0?

It makes a difference because version numbers are supposed to give you a clue about how much has changed. Now, suddenly after all these years, people are jacking up the version numbers while making only minor minor changes.

Those are release names that you're complaining about also have version numbers too using a different versioning scheme. They use "(year).(month)" as the version number to denote releases. For a distro this makes sense as you want to know how old a release is that you're downloading.

Also every operating system has release names, windows vista, apple's lion OS for example. It seems pretty redundant to point at just linux.

this is what mozilla could've done - a version number which is used by extensions (4.0, 4.0.1, 4.1.0, 4.1.1, etc.) and an external version number for marketing purposes: Firefox 5, Firefox XT, Firefox ME, etc.

this is one thing that I believe Microsoft has done right.

version numbers have a meaning - my opinion is that people who say "get over the version numbers" do not hav

Linus made a one-time change because the old Linux version numbering scheme didn't match reality. 2.6.23 to 2.6.24 was a pretty big bump feature-wise but sounds like a trival patch. Under the new system, that would be 3.1 to 3.2. Isn't that what you're asking for--numbers which indicate how much has changed?

Actually, the 3 series is really quite different from the 2 series. It's not like they're suddenly spewing majors like Firefox &c - they just decided it's about time to move on to 3. It's been a while, and there have been a lot of changes between. Unlike Firefox (I can't even tell 4 and 5 apart, and now 6 is coming), and Chrome (it moves so fast, I don't even know which version I have anymore), Linux has been at 2 for quite a while.

Yeah, the *2.6* SERIES is quite different even from itself. Meanwhile the 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 series had at least mostly had stabilized API/ABIs during the time of their existance, occasionally getting features backported (Thinking about USB,Wifi, and a few filesystem module primarily there). 2.6 however was having constant and incompatible changes ever 5-10 minor numbers. Devfs droppage, incompatible udev changes (Ever tried updating a system only to have it temporarily hosed because you had the wrong udev version running and all your device entries are now wrong??), constant gfx abi breakage (see nvidia/ati drivers constantly being 2-5 minor nums behind, and then having to drop older support for maintainability).

While a jump to 2.8 for the aforementioned features stabilizing would make sense, with a 2.9 dev branch started to restandardize 'stable' versus 'experimental' changes the jump to 3.0 was entirely unwarranted and just more of the me-tooness that linux seems to be have been heading towards for a good 5 years now. Honestly the only thing holding me to linux at this point is a lack of desire to have to repartition my disks using bsd slices, and a lack of alternative open source OSe that are actually robust enough to boot on all my hardware. (I have reference spec dual processor 440FX systems, the same chipset emulated by qemu, and despite being developed on it, ReactOS, Haiku, Solaris, and a few others never make it out of their first stage bootloaders, on IDE, SCSI, or SATA. Disappointing to say the least.)

Combined with the current Gnome BS (Which anyone who has tried running it on an system dated '04 or earlier will attest to.), there's not a lot of motivation to use linux over alternatives such as Windows, or a Mac/Hackintosh OSX box. The latter two might be slow, but nowadays with a 'desktop' GUI, so is the former. And it seems like the bureaucratic messes running these 'foundations' are so focused on 'features' and 'moving forward', that they've forgotten that one of great strengths of UNIX has always been it's long term compatibility.

For another example of this fubar'ing, Go look at GNU coreutils, and as an example, try running the old Loki linux game demos on it. Gee, don't work too well? They decided to deprecate and remove the - feature of head and tail, leading to breakage of numerous scripts dating back how many decades? Additionally, while I may be wrong, the line number feature they replace it with hadn't even EXISTED back in those days, and so for the sake of (whatever rationale was used) they broke it, knowing full well it would cause lots of peoples software to break in unexpected and possibly silent manners.

Would you trust this sort of mentality with YOUR long term software needs?

(And no, contrary to the belief set forth I am not a shill for MS or Apple. In fact I have a rather low opinion of both. I just happen to also hold many of the unilateral development decisions pushed by 'benevolent dictators' (not just Linus! Go look at glibc for another example!) in utter contempt due to their throwing the baby out with the bathwater, especially given the ever increasing bloat in many of the applications, libraries and kernel (C'mon, seriously, removing backwards compatibility while adding *10* extra features that add a meg of code 9/10s of people will never use while removing the one feature they will?!?!).

I'll just end this rant by asking: 'How many of you have been bit by one of the aforementioned issues, and what is your take on the modern 'MBA' mentality that seems to be creeping it's way into the open source ecosystem?'

I'll just end this rant by asking: 'How many of you have been bit by one of the aforementioned issues, and what is your take on the modern 'MBA' mentality that seems to be creeping it's way into the open source ecosystem?'

My take? It's been enough for me to completely abandon any further attempts to convert to Linux until they stop fucking with things. I'm sticking with Windows 7 for now because it's proven to me to me a mature, very solid and surprisingly stable platform to run all of my software (both pro

I'm sorry to say it but if you want long term stability, stop upgrading your damned Linux dist so often. It's that simple. Pick a version of Debian or one of the longer lived commercial dists and stick with it forever. Then your arcane code will continue to run and you will be happy. If however you're trying to track the latest dists and run the oldest software, the chasm between your feet will continue to grow.

As for the other things, the changes to GNOME & the kernel. Perhaps it is in large part thr

I'm sorry , which "modern world" are you talking about? The one where the GUI gets in the fscking way of what the user actually wants to do?

"If the improvements break something in user land then tough."

No , its not "tough" , its moronic. Backwards compatability is not a nice-to-have , its a pretty damn fundamental to businesses and normal users. If you don't understand this then stay away from software development because you're obviously utte

I'm sorry , which "modern world" are you talking about? The one where the GUI gets in the fscking way of what the user actually wants to do?

I'm talking about the compositing desktop world. You know, the world that has allowed Windows and OS X desktops to race ahead and be dramatically more useful (for games, video etc.), responsive (by harnessing the GPU) and attractive (by using compositing technology) than Linux counterparts. I'm talking about GNOME (and KDE) not sitting on their hands and ignoring user interface and usability developments which have happened in the last 10 years elsewhere. Maybe you're happy stuck in the year 2000 like some

Compositing is a function of the X server you clueless gimp , it has NOTHING to do with the window manager/desktop.

"You're not calling me utterly clueless, you're calling the Linux kernel developers utterly clueless including Linus Torvalds because this is the way the kernel has been developed for the LAST 20 YEARS."

Yes , and I've never been a fan of this approach. But its got a lot worse recently.

I see you know as little about compositing as you appear to about kernels. Compositing is done by a compositor which in GNOME 3's case is the window manager - mutter standing for metacity + clutter. Mutter takes surfaces representing each window, manages them as a scenegraph and renders them as a whole to form the screen. X plays very little part in any of this except providing some hoops and context switches that the compositor must jump through to render. X is largely superfluous otherwise, playing little

Stop compounding your ignorance please. Of course the compositor is an extension because X doesn't know the first thing about compositing. It sends out a damage event and the compositor rerenders everything and tells X to page flip. That's what the compositor is for and it is built into the window manager that GNOME uses. You're really making a fool of yourself here.

No , its not "tough" , its moronic. Backwards compatability is not a nice-to-have , its a pretty damn fundamental to businesses and normal users.

Not really. If, as a business, we have a need to run some old proprietary software that requires RedHat 4, then we will run in in a VM, so we get the complete software stack that the software was originally written and tested on. We certainly don't expect software that was released a decade ago to run on systems that it was never designed or tested for, and we wouldn't waste time trying to make it work when the VM option is available. This isn't specific to Linux either - if we have an app that requires Wi

Thats all well and good, but someone has to take the time to find a host for the VM , set it up including updates, logins and all the various mappings and then maintain it. And thats before you get into performance considerations.

VMs arn't a magic bullet, in fact for a lot of things they're barely a bullet at all.

Setting up a ESXi server is a one time task that tasks 15 minutes. The alternative to a VM is to run the system on real hardware. This also needs to be procured, maintained, backed up etc. There are also driver compatibility issues with running old operating systems on new hardware. I doubt there are many businesses running legacy systems who don't already have a number of VM servers available for this task. The potential performance issues are greatly outweighed by the fact that you are running the system

Not quite. Chrome and FF release major versions often. According to wiki, this is the first major version change of Linux since June 1996.

And linux still has some significance in the numbers after the three numbers, but the x.x.x don't matter, really. They might as well be doing linux 4 and 5 and so on in the coming months. It's because of the way they develop (and, as in the case of linux have been developing for years) - they just do their thing

At least we have sensible projects like FreeBSD and Python, which only
increment the major version number when there's a good reason to.

And Debian. Let's not forget Debian.

Actually, infrastructure projects shouldn't be evolving that fast. At the risk of confusing matters somewhat, they're like elephants carrying a gaggle of mice. If they move too fast, the mice will just fall off, and have you ever tried to recompile a box of rodents during a bull run?

Linux 2.6.1 was released only three weeks after 2.6.0. By my count there were 10 releases in 2004, and then 4-5 releases every year after that. This works out okay for the kernel since the "official" kernel is treated as the beta kernel for most distributions, which update less frequently and with more testing, and about once a year, they designate a kernel for long-term support, and it receives bug patches.

Firefox releases are user facing, however and I have yet to hear any plan for long term support of ve

I'd argue that a four part version number (first three being the standard and the fourth being used for variants such as the stable series and the distro trees) is a Good Thing. A three part number doesn't gain you very much and won't be stuck to anyway.

The change in the major number was also a Good Thing. It revealed bugs in software that used hard-coded values, for example. This is the twenty-first century AD, guys, hard-coding stopped being useful when we stopped chiseling values into cave walls.